To ensure that your cold emails end up being successful, and not a mediocre attempt at a sales pitch like many other cold emails, you must keep the following goals in mind-

a) To get the maximum possible benefit by utilizing the smallest possible amount of effort and resources.

b) To spread your most impactful messages to the largest possible audience, so that you can improve the response rate.

Email optimization comes with its fair share of challenges, the biggest hurdle being the A/B test. The A/B test involves two variations of the same message being sent out to determine which one gets a more positive response. While the A/B test is used frequently to compare performances, you need a relatively high sample to prove that the results you get are due to the variables you’re testing, and not a random outcome.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR COLD EMAILS-

Don’t immediately start sending your messages to large audiences; your goal should be to deliver them to small batches of people to get their response and opinions, before moving on to larger audiences. Given below is the process to effectively optimize your cold emails-

1) SET YOUR BASELINE METRICS:

Always set a base figure for your optimization, this can vary based on the specific type of conversation you want to track. A few things you should track are open rates, response rates, and click through rates. You have two options which you can base your metrics off-

a) Your current numbers- If you have previously optimized your email response, or have been tracking your target metric, you can use those figures for setting a baseline.

b) Industry averages- It is easier to set your baseline at the industry average, especially if you’re not sure where you stand. Find a starting point by searching the web for statistics and results for the average response of cold emails in your industry, and set your baseline keeping that figure in mind.

2) SET A GOAL:

Once you’ve set your baseline metrics, you need a goal to move forward. Ideally, you should pick a number that shows an improvement from your baseline, but not too high a number that it cannot be achieved. You can keep changing this number as you run multiple tests, based on the results you get.

3) DESIGN AND RUN YOUR EXPERIMENTS:

Design experiments which are most likely to get you your decided goals. There are two ways of going about this, you can either make small changes and slightly tweak an existing design, or you can make large changes and completely change its framework. If you follow the A/B split testing, it is advised to test a single variable at a time to know exactly what you have to work on. A few questions to keep in mind are:

> Are my cold emails being delivered or do they get sent to spam?

>Is my target audience the right fit for this particular sales pitch?

>Can my subject line be improved?

>Is it possible for me to share more helpful information without changing the subject?

>Have I used the right tone for this email?

> Can I use a different template to make my message more striking?

4) RUN YOUR TEST:

It’s time to put your tests into practice. Choose two alternatives of the same message, and send a specific number (eg, 50) of cold emails of each type. After a few days, measure and compare the results of the two alternatives. Choose the one that gets the better response, and come up with various alternatives within that one type, and keep testing until you achieve your target. However, you must be absolutely sure that your results are statistically significant for the tests to be conclusive.

5) KEEP TESTING:

Once your test has concluded, start the next one. You can repeat your previous tests with a different target audience, or start a new one. To improve your test results, you may also want to contact the people who did not respond to your test emails to figure out where you went wrong. Always keep testing and setting various goals for your optimization. Remember, consistency is the key.

About

Sending out email campaigns can get tedious, we tend to waste hours just to know, whom to follow up with.
That is why we came up with Closify! Abhishek Shelke, Founder.